The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), the lead NIH Institute for tuberculosis (TB) research, is working to develop and enhance collaborations with Ministries of Health and other funding agencies in various countries to conduct high quality clinical research in TB. With the second largest TB epidemic in the world and the largest number of patients with multidrug-resistant TB (MDR-TB), China is a major priority. NIAID has established a collaborative partnership with the investigators currently funded by the Chinese Ministry of Health (MOH) to build a sustainable Chinese research network/consortium that will conduct multicenter clinical TB studies. This collaboration/consortium has come to be recognized as the China Tuberculosis Clinical Trial Consortium (CTCTC). The MOH and other agencies such as the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) of China have selected a research agenda for which the CTCTC will be leveraged to conduct high quality TB clinical research of global health importance.